The West is safer when jihadis don't change their underwear; get a bite out of this

By
Chuck Shepherd

• Two FBI agents, providing a backstory to "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's Christmas-time 2009 attempt to bring down an airliner in Detroit, said they believe the man accustomed himself to the tricked-out skivvies beforehand by wearing them full-time for the three weeks leading up to his flight (except for bathing).

The agents, speaking to Detroit's WXYZ-TV in September, suggested that the excessive wearing might have ruined the detonation mechanism. [WXYZ-TV, 9-27-2012]

• Oops, My Bad: Hattiesburg, Miss., dentist Michael West has for years been a well-compensated, prosecution-friendly "expert" witness who claimed he could match bite marks on victims' bodies to bite patterns of whichever defendant the prosecutor wanted convicted.

In "dozens" of cases, according to an Associated Press report, he helped persuade judges and jurors that his analysis was just as solid as fingerprint identification.

(Other forensic experts regularly ridiculed West's "science.")

In August, the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., uncovered a 2011 deposition in which West finally admitted that his bite-mark analysis should not have been used in court cases. It is not yet known how many defendants' trials were tainted by West's testimony. [Associated Press via WLOX-TV (Biloxi), 8-6-2012]